Let’s pretend for a moment that I am your personal trainer or strength coach.
I advise you that for your Monday workouts, I want you to perform the following exercises: the arm curl, the overhead press, the hamstring curl, and the heel raise.
I then advise you that for your Thursday workouts, I want you to perform the biceps curl, the shoulder press, the knee flexion, and the calf raise.
Thus, for your Monday and Thursday workouts, I have given you eight different exercises to perform. Haven’t I?
The four exercises that I prescribed to you for your Monday workouts are identical to the ones that I prescribed to for your Thursday workouts. The arm curl is the same as the biceps curl, the overhead press is the same as the shoulder press, the hamstring curl is the same as the knee flexion, and the heel raise is the same as the calf raise.
Though it is unlikely for a given personal trainer to be that inconsistent with their own use of exercise names, research within the past 10 years has shown there is indeed a lack of consistency and cohesiveness in exercise nomenclature.
To date, three studies have documented inconsistencies in the way that exercises are named and communicated. The first study, published in 2013 found that exercises are named inconsistently within and between exercise and health professionals, including athletic trainers, personal trainers, strength and conditioning coaches, clinicians, and exercise academics. An example of a within-profession inconsistency was observed when the group of clinicians were shown a photograph of a given exercise and 39% of them called it the “bench press,” while 36% of them called it the “chest press.” Interestingly, when exercise academics were shown the same photograph, 78% of them called the exercise the “bench press” and none called it the “chest press.” This result illustrates between-profession inconsistency with how clinicians and exercise academics name exercises.
In 2017, I published a study, in which I detailed the different types of words that are used in exercise names and how they are arranged, albeit inconsistently, into naming patterns. Importantly, the exercise names that I analysed came from a strength and conditioning textbook that is commonly assigned to university students.
I found that the most common type of words in exercise names were actions words. Examples included words like “press,” “push,” “pull,” “row,” “raise,” and “curl.” Body part words, such as “shoulder,” “biceps,” and “leg,” were also common in exercise names, as were equipment words such as “bench” and “barbell.”
In 2020, I published a follow-up study in which I documented inconsistent use of exercise names across scientific articles written by different researchers. For example, authors of 68 articles used the name “calf raise,” whereas authors of 154 articles used the name “heel raise,” when referring to the same exercise.
Thus, the existing research on exercise names shows that exercises are named inconsistently within textbooks, across scientific articles, and between different healthcare professionals. And the reason that these inconsistencies are important to acknowledge and address is that such inconsistencies might reduce communication efficiency about exercise and cause confusion about exercise concepts that are discussed in educational, clinical, and public health settings.
I wish I were able to tell you that since publication of these research studies, that the issue of inconsistent exercise names has been resolved. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In fact, the inconsistencies could get worse do recent technological developments in exercise equipment that allow for a different type of strength training or resistance exercise to be performed.
At the end of 2023, we published a paper in the journal Sports Medicine, titled, “Eccentric Muscle Actions Add Complexity to an Already Inconsistent Resistance Exercise Nomenclature.” In the paper, we argue that the recent explosion of interest in eccentric resistance exercise is likely to create even more confusion about exercise names.
Some of you will be unfamiliar with eccentric strength training, so let me take a minute to explain what it is. I will use the biceps curl exercise as an example.
The biceps curl exercise, like most other exercises, can be broken down into two phases. There is the phase where you lift or curl the weight from your hip to your chest by bending your elbow. This part of the exercise is called the concentricphase. It means that your muscle lifted the weight by producing force via the shortening of muscle fibers.
The other phase of the biceps curl exercise is the eccentric phase, where you lower the weight from your chest back down to your hip. During the eccentric phase, your muscle is still producing force as it works against gravity pulling the weight down.
People typically do not think much about the lowering or eccentric phase of an exercise. One reason for this is because this phase of the exercise is easier to perform. If you are holding a 15-pound dumbbell in your hand and perform as many biceps curl repetitions as you possibly can, the point at which you “fail” during the exercise is when you can no longer lift or curl the weight up – that is, you can no longer complete the concentric phase of the exercise. Yet, if given the opportunity, you could keep lowering the same dumbbell many more times. The reason that you can keep lowering the 15-pound dumbbell more than you can keep lifting the same dumbbell, is that our muscles are about 40% stronger during eccentric muscle actions than concentric muscle actions.
Understanding this feature of human biology and motor control, inventors have created exercise machines, such as flywheel devices and connected adaptive resistance exercise (CARE) machines, in which higher levels of resistance can be provided in the eccentric than concentric phase. These advancements in technology are exciting because eccentric exercise is known to provide a potent stimulus for increasing muscle strength, and this new equipment makes completion of eccentric exercise more feasible in different exercise settings.
Nevertheless, in our recent paper, we present the case that the proliferation of eccentric resistance exercise is likely to add further confusion to an already inconsistent resistance exercise nomenclature. The reason for this is because most exercise names include an action word, and action words almost always describe the action that occurs in the concentric phase of the exercise.
For example, some of the most common action words in exercise names are “push,” “press,” “row,” “pull,” “curl,” and “raise.” All of these words describe the action performed in the concentric phase. Consequently, when using new technologies that can eliminate the concentric phase of the exercise and allow for only eccentric muscle actions under resistance, it is unclear what to call such exercises. For example, what should we call the exercise I described earlier if only the eccentric phase is performed under resistance? Should it be called the eccentric biceps curl, even though the curl movement is never performed?
Unfortunately, the field of exercise science does not have a solution to such issues in nomenclature. The purpose of our paper was to simply point out that most exercises are named based on their concentric actions and that we need to consider how the proliferation of eccentric exercise might further complicate how exercises are named and communicated. I have previously suggested that the creation of a taxonomy of exercise names, supplemented with guidelines for naming exercises, could help to resolve issues of inconsistent exercise nomenclature. Resolving such inconsistencies might then facilitate communication and understanding of resistance exercise in educational, clinical, and research settings.
This year, we will be analysing results from a large survey study in which we assessed how people name exercises. From this information, we might be able to work toward making recommendations for how exercises can be named more consistently.
And perhaps you can contribute to this discussion. The next time you are at the gym and take a pair of dumbbells and push them toward the ceiling, ask yourself, “Should this exercise be called the overhead press or the shoulder press? And why?”
I look forward to hearing the results of your personal analysis.
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What’s in an exercise name?